Canastota, N.Y. -- With folks standing three and four deep here along Peterboro Street beneath Sunday afternoon’s ominous sky, and with the likes of Mike Tyson and Julio Cesar Chavez and Marvin Hagler waving back to them from a slow-moving fleet of convertibles, the wonder was that jaws didn’t drop to the curb.

It was unimaginable, really. And yet 10,000 eyes -- no, 20,000 eyes . . . maybe more -- were gazing upon that which logic would suggest could not be.

But there they were, all of the museum pieces come to life, imported from five different continents and bound, with smiles (and in some cases, rap sheets), for the little shrine across the street from McDonald’s next to the Thruway. And as the cars rolled along, one couldn’t help but reflect upon those words submitted the night before by Lou Duva, the 89-year-old trainer/manager who’s been around quite a few blocks.

“What a job this guy has done,” Duva said at an Onondaga County War Memorial dinner that had attracted 1,200 boxing fans at $135 a pop. “If anybody deserves a hand, if anybody is the champion of the world, it is Ed Brophy.”

Brophy, of course, is the executive director of the Boxing Hall of Fame, which on Sunday inducted 12 more members -- including, oddly, actor Sylvester Stallone, who begged out of the parade for reasons of “security” -- before the largest gathering of rubber-neckers in its history that dates back to 1990.

And Brophy, and his small army of volunteers, have worked a kind of miracle.

Mike Tyson Induction Speech at Boxing Hall of FameFormer heavyweight champion ‘Iron’ Mike Tyson, one of the most dominant and controversial boxing figures both in and out of the ring, gives his induction speech at the Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, NY on June 12, 2011.

Sunday? It was stunning, especially watching Tyson, the twice-imprisoned brute, crying on the induction stage and then walking off in mid-speech, too emotionally spent to complete his assignment.

But Saturday evening over in Syracuse was no less impressive as more than $150,000 had been ponied up by the diners, who were only too happy to chow down at the feet of those 48 men, in various states of health, at the head table.

Oh, there were unfortunate moments, sure, most of which were provided by Hagler, who babbled at the podium for just under 12 minutes and referred to Chavez as “Julius Caesar Chavez,” to George Chuvalo as “George Ku-valo,” and to Livingstone Bramble as “Livingston Ramble.”

Meanwhile, Don King, the mellifluous orator/promoter/ex-con, talked for one second longer than Hagler (literally) and took his time at the microphone to re-write a chapter of the Revolutionary War before quoting both John Paul Jones and Cicero.

And then there was Stallone, whose career was made by his birthing of the celluloid champion, Rocky Balboa. Never a boxer, Sly would nonetheless be enshrined in a house devoted to boxing the following afternoon. And he’d flown in from Hollywood to provide the poetry.

“The one thing about fighters is that they are the purest form of humanitarians,” said Stallone, apparently forgetting that humanitarians are actually dedicated to the elimination of pain and suffering (i.e., the very tenets of the boxer). “They really get in there and show what they’re made of before the world. They can’t hide. They have a little piece of cloth on, a pair of boots, gloves. And the only thing they’re showing is their soul and their heart.”

He was cheered, naturally. And that was fine. But the really big deal was that he, the luminous Sylvester Stallone, was there in the house -- and would be in Canastota (Canastota!) the next day -- along with Tyson and Chavez and Hagler and all the rest.

Amazing, it was . . . and not altogether easy to understand. Which means that Lou Duva had spoken well.

(Bud Poliquin's columns, his "To The Point" observations and his on-line commentaries appear virtually every day on syracuse.com. His work can also be regularly found on the pages of The Post-Standard newspaper. Additionally, he can be heard Mondays through Fridays (10 a.m.-12 noon), on the "Bud & the Manchild" sports-talk radio show on The Score 1260-AM. E-mail: bpoliquin@syracuse.com.)